Cronenberg’s Blade Runner

I’m not sure what the Polish have been drinking over the years but they’ve been making some pretty creative games lately. Bloober Team may not have the shining reputation that the Witcher’s CD Projekt Red boasts but their latest foray into the horror explorer may be the redemption they need to pull themselves out of indie obscurity and into the big time.

They are mildly known on the indie circuit but I daresay BT has found their calling when it comes to blending my two favorite things, horror and cyberpunk.

>Observer_ casts the player as a Krakow police officer in the year 2084 after a great world war and a disease called the nanophage nearly wiped out human beings that were augmented with cybernetics. The aftermath placed mega corporations in charge of the survivors and into a dark Orwellian dystopia where people would rather find escape through drugs and tech addiction. And hey who would blame them?

Along with the corporate police state there exists specialized police units that are for the most part walking and talking forensic laboratories. Which is who you are, an Observer, equipped with a nifty thing called a Dream Eater which is a badass name for wetware that allows them to hack into the memories of an augmented human a la Inception and fuddle around for evidence of that secret recipe for egg salad.

Did I mention you’re Rutger Hauer? Mr. R. Batty himself talks you into a twisted journey of scary dystopia with those smooth dulcet tones that skim the edges of the uncanny valley.

There is mystery a foot and you and Rutger must use your wits and cyber enhancements to look for clues, interrogate NPCs, and piece together the fragmented minds of troubled individuals in order to figure out why there is a headless body in room 107. As you can assume the body count gets higher as the narrative gets weirder and weirder.

Bloober Team have gone out of their way to add little touches to the design that spice up the immersion. For instance, the technology implanted in humans gives an array of awesome abilities but comes at a price, over time the human body rejects the tech and therefore medical treatments must be regularly administered or the person will catastrophically fail in some way.

In the case of the player the screen and interface will start tearing, the frame rates get buggy, and graphical anomalies start flickering at random when you’ve gone some time without taking your meds. Which your headset will remind you.

Which you will ignore. Which you will insist is a game breaking glitch, or your GPU has finally gone nuke every time you turn to look at things. Which leads you down a rabbit hole of troubleshooting and reloading until you finally heed the advice of the tinny electronic voice and take your stupid medicine. The game clears up, no more graphical glitches, hitches, or screen anomalies. Okay game, you have my attention!

Although it’s listed as survival horror I’ve not done much surviving in the way of running and hiding from maniac cyborgs or anything. The game moves like molasses in Michigan which is an obvious design choice for good reason.

>Observer_ is slow, tense, and moody with that psychological edge that sharpens itself on the back of your skull until a jump scare releases the cortisol and your bladder simultaneously. It’s not overt though, and when traipsing through the horrors of the drug and tech addled minds of the denizens within >Observer_there is no real fear of being eaten or chopped up by whatever is lurking in the endless hallways of their nightmares.

Which is fine by me. Games that crank up the adrenaline production to 11 have the same appeal as chugging a bottle of ghost pepper sauce and chasing it with a kick to the junk.

This one is about solving the mystery and being spooked in a fully realized cyberpunk dystopian playground. There is no gilded technology, no redemption of humanity, and no reassurances that your quest will end happily. There is you, untrustworthy technology, the horrors of the human psyche and the overwhelming desire to see just how far the adventure goes just to see what will happen next.

>Observer_ will jack into your curiosity and your imagination with its pacing and art design. For an indie adventure game this is a must have for anyone who loves a dark brooding mystery with plenty of “WTF?!” moments.

When not vaporizing zombies or leading space marines as a mousepad Mattis, Brandon Watson is making gourmet pancakes and promoting local artists.